Tips & Tricks

• Enable NTFS on a USB Flash Drive
• Enable the 'Administrator' account on the Windows Vista welcome screen
• Enable Automatic Logon for Windows Vista
• Optimizing Swap File Performance.
• Defragmenting your Hard drive.
• Compressing the Windows Registry, and Scanreg.exe
• Access Time Is Not Seek Time
• Make the Faster Drive the Master
• When formatting a very large hard disk (Over 32GB) with FAT32 in Windows 2000 you do not see the entire drive.
• Reassigning drive letters in Windows XP & 2000?

Enable NTFS on a USB Flash Drive

1. Right click on 'My Computer' and select 'Manage'.
2. Open the 'Device Manager', find the USB drive under the Disk Drives.
3. Right click the drive and select 'Properties'.
4. Choose the 'Policies' tab and select the 'Optimize for performance' option.
5. Click OK.
6. Open 'My Computer'.
7. Right click on the flash drive and select 'Format'.
8. Choose NTFS from the File System dropdown box.

Make sure to choose 'Safely Remove Hardware' to remove the flash drive.

Enable the 'Administrator' account on the Windows Vista welcome screen

1. Click Start | run
2. Enter "control userpasswords2" (Without Quotes).
3. Click the 'Advanced' tab.
4. Click the 'Advanced' button in the 'Advanced User Management' area.
5. Click on 'Users' in the left hand panel.
6. Double Click on 'Administrator' in the center panel.
7. Remove the check next to 'Account is Disabled'.
8. Click 'Apply' then 'ok'.
9. Log off, Switch User or Shut Down.
10. During the next logon you will be prompted to enter a password for the 'Administrator' account. Or:

1. Click Start | run
2. Enter "control userpasswords2" (Without Quotes).
3. Select 'administrator' from "Users for this computer".
4. Click the Reset Password... button, enter a new password.
5. Click "Ok".

The administrator account should now appear on the welcome screen.

Enable Automatic Logon for Windows Vista

1.  Click Start | run and enter 'netplwiz'
2.  Uncheck the checkbox "Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer".
3.  Click the 'Apply' button.
4.  A new dialog box will open, enter 'administrator' or the name of the account you want to enable auto-logon for (Note: If this account does not use a password then leave the password entry blank).
5.  Click OK.

Optimizing Swap File Performance.

If your system has multiple hard drives moving the swap file to your fastest drive can improve its performance.

1.  In Control Panel choose System, then System Properties.
2.  Click on the Performance tab, and from the Advanced Settings option, select Virtual Memory.
3.  Select Let me specify my own virtual memory settings. You can then choose the new disk from the list in the Hard Disk box.
4.  Select a Minimum swap file size equal to about 2.5 to 3 * Installed RAM. Leave that Maximum alone.
5.  You'll need to restart Windows 95 before the new settings will take effect.

Defragmenting your Hard drive.

A lot of new computer users don't understand the importance of defragmenting their hard drive. There is no mystery... Every time you delete files or simply delete data from existing files, you create empty spots on the hard drive. When you add data or new files, Windows places them wherever it can find a spot. Eventually the disk gets quite fragmented and Windows runs slower and less efficiently because it has to locate information from all over the disk. You should run defrag.exe on a regular basis to defragment the hard drive and everything neatly. It is also a good idea to run scandisk.exe first. From the Start choose "Programs" then "Accessories" then "System Tools". Click on Scandisk to search for and eliminate lost clusters and other errors. Normally the "standard" test is adequate. Then, in the same "System Tools" folder, select Disk Defragmenter. It will tell you what percentage fragmentation you have and recommend whether defragmenting is necessary or not. But this is unreliable and even 1% fragmentation is worth cleaning up. Simply click "start" to begin.

Compressing the Windows Registry, and Scanreg.exe

We suggest you to make a backup of the registry before you begin. If you're running in Windows, restart in MS-DOS mode (click Start > Shut Down, and choose Restart in MS-DOS mode from the Shut Down Windows menu At the MS-DOS prompt type: scanreg /backup, this will backup your registry Now type scanreg /opt Scanreg will compress the registry.

Scanreg:

/Backup
/Opt
/Autorun
/Restore
/Comment=""
/Win
/Fix
/Setup
/Fixbad
/Fix
/Dossetup

Access Time Is Not Seek Time

If you shopping for a new hard drive but are confused by the specifications, remember that the key number is Average Access Time. This is the time it takes from the issuance of a command to access a single sector to the time when the drive's head reaches the sector. But beware, some ads quote Seek Time that is not the appropriate measurement. Average Access Time is Seek Time plus latency (the time it takes for the chosen sector to come around to be positioned under the head)

Make the Faster Drive the Master

If you have two drives of varying speeds (for example, one rotating at 7,200rpm and one rotating at 10,000rpm, designate the faster drive as the master and the slower as the slave. The status of the drives is determined by setting small jumpers that are usually located next to the IDE connector on the drive itself. SCSI drives also need unique designations ID numbers-they, too, are determined by jumpers on internal hard drives. This is also true for CD-ROM drives, and hard drive-CD-ROM drive combinations. To calculate CD-ROM transfer rates take the X factor times 150Kbps. Example: The transfer rate for a 36X CD-ROM would be 36 x 153600 =   5529600 or 5.4Mbps. (1K = 1024Bytes)

When formatting a very large hard disk (Over 32GB) with FAT32 in Windows 2000 you do not see the entire drive.

The theoretical partition size for FAT32 in Windows 2000 is 2TB (Terra bites). However, there is a known problem with large drives and a limitation of 32GB using FAT32.

There are two solutions to this problem, you can format the drive using NTFS, or you can format the drive using a Windows 98 startup disk and then install Windows 2000. For some reason which is unclear (except to perhaps push the NTFS file system) Windows 2000 seems to accept FAT32 volumes over 32GB when they where setup using Windows 98. Here are a few of the listed rules for FAT32 volumes as listed in the MS knowledge base article #Q184006.

"Clusters cannot be 64 kilobytes (KB) or larger. If clusters were 64 KB or larger, some programs (such as Setup programs) might calculate disk space incorrectly.

A volume must contain at least 65,527 clusters to use the FAT32 file system. You cannot increase the cluster size on a volume using the FAT32 file system so that it ends up with less than 65,527 clusters.

The maximum possible number of clusters on a volume using the FAT32 file system is 268,435,445. With a maximum of 32 KB per cluster with space for the file allocation table (FAT), this equates to a maximum disk size of approximately 8 terabytes (TB).

The ScanDisk tool included with Microsoft Windows 95 and Microsoft Windows 98 is a 16-bit program. Such programs have a single memory block maximum allocation size of 16 MB less 64 KB. Therefore, The Windows 95/98 ScanDisk tool cannot process volumes using the FAT32 file system that have a FAT larger than 16 MB less 64 KB in size. A FAT entry on a volume using the FAT32 file system uses 4 bytes, so ScanDisk cannot process the FAT on a volume using the FAT32 file system that defines more than 4,177,920 clusters (including the two reserved clusters). Including the FATs themselves, this works out, at the maximum of 32 KB per cluster, to a volume size of 127.53 gigabytes (GB).

You cannot decrease the cluster size on a volume using the FAT32 file system so that the FAT ends up larger than 16 MB less 64 KB in size.

You cannot format a volume larger than 32 GB in size using the FAT32 file system in Windows 2000. The Windows 2000 FastFAT driver can mount and support volumes larger than 32 GB that use the FAT32 file system (subject to the other limits), but you cannot create one using the Format tool. This behavior is by design. If you need to create a volume larger than 32 GB, use the NTFS file system instead."

Reassigning drive letters in Windows XP & 2000?

Right click My Computer and select Manage. After the Computer Management console has opened select the Disk Management folder in the left window. Right click the drive and select Change Drive Letter and Path. NOTE: Changing drive letters may affect the operation of some of your software. If this occurs, reinstall the software.